Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 6

“Makes sense, officer.”

“Good girl,” he said, returning her license and registration.

A motel. Not likely. When Hitch’s film came out, people wouldn’t check into motels without thinking twice. People wouldn’t take showers. Or climb stairs. Or go into fruit cellars. Or trust young men with twitchy smiles who liked to stuff (and mount) birds.

If the film came out now. She might have scratched that.

The cop turned and walked back to his motorcycle. Rain on his back, pouring down his neck.

Why had he stopped her? Suspicion, of course. But of what?

The theft can’t have been reported yet. Might not be until Monday morning. Word couldn’t be out. This cop wasn’t rousting a woman motorist for kicks, like they usually did. Maybe he was just concerned? There had to be some cops like that …

While she had the door open, water rained in. Her shoes were soaked.

She pulled the door shut and tried to start the car. The motor seized up and died. Then choked, then drew out a death scene like Charles Laughton, then caught again … and she drove on.

Damn, December night fell quick.

Now, she was driving through dark and rain. The road ahead was as murky as a poverty-row back-projection plate. Her right headlight was on the fritz, winking like a lecher at a co-ed.

The cop was right. She had to pull over. If she slept in this leaky car, she’d drown. If she drove on, she’d end up in the sea. The Ford Custom did not come with an optional lifeboat. She wasn’t sure hers even had a usable spare tire.

Through blobby cascades on the windshield, she saw a flashing light.

VACANCY.

A motel. She remembered her vow. No motels, never again … she knew, really, there was little chance of being butchered by a homicidal maniac. That was just the movies. Still, there was every chance of running into a travelling salesman or an off-duty cop or an overage wild one, and being cajoled or strong-armed or blackmailed into a room with cheap liquor and “Que Sera Sera” on the radio. The ending to that story would surprise to no one.

She’d been photographed in motel rooms. She’d been interviewed in motel rooms. She’d auditioned for movie projects that didn’t really exist. If some dentist wanted to call himself a producer and play casting couch games, he hooked onto a script about giant leeches or dragstrip dolls just to set up his own private orgy. She’d checked into a motel with a young actor — not Tony Perkins, but someone a few steps behind him — and posed for bedroom candids leaked to the scandal sheets to squelch whispers that the rising stud preferred beach boys to bikini babes. In print, they put a black bar across her eyes.

She’d been abandoned in motels, too … left with bills for booze and damages. Some guys couldn’t have a party without breaking a lamp or knocking a picture off the wall. Or hurting someone, just to hear the squeal and see blood on their knuckles.

VACANCY.

The light flashed like a cliff-top lantern on a cliff in a three-cornered hat picture, luring storm-tossed ships onto the rocks to be looted.

She was more likely to die on the road than in this place.

So, she pulled off the highway and bumped downhill into a parking lot. There were other cars there. The lights were on in a single-storey building.

HACIENDA HAYSLIP.

Like every other place in California, this motel impersonated an Old Spanish Mission — protruding beams, fake adobe, concrete cactus, a neon sombrero over the name.

Once, the Pacific was the far edge of the world. The Jesuits got here first, even before the bandits. Jayne had been to Catholic school. She was more afraid of priests than outlaws. Priests were worse than cops. Beyond the shadow of a doubt. Cops just played the game by rules that favored them. Priests took the same liberties, but told you it was God’s will that you got robbed or rousted or raped.

She parked as near the office as possible and made a dash from her car to the lit-up shelter. By now, she couldn’t get much wetter.

Pushing through the front door, she was enveloped by heat. The office was built around an iron stove that radiated oppressive warmth. Windows were steamed up. Viennese waltz music came from an old-fashioned record player.

In a rocking chair by the stove sat a small thin woman, knitting. On a stool behind the front desk perched a fat young man, reading a comic book. They both turned to look at her. She must be a fright. Something the cat would drag in.

“Arthur,” said the woman, “see to the customer …”

Her voice was like a parrot’s, chirruping words it couldn’t understand. The thin woman had a grating, shrill tone and another British accent … a comedy fishwife or a slum harridan. Cockney . Jayne had heard other Englishmen say Hitch was a cockney. He went tight around the collar if it was said to his loose-jowelled face. It was a put-down, she guessed — like “polack” or “hunkie.” David Niven and Peter Lawford weren’t cockneys. Cary Grant for sure wasn’t a cockney. Hitch was, and so was this woman who had somehow fetched up on the far side of the world, in the country of Jesuits and outlaws and Indians and gold-diggers.

“In the fullness of time, Mahmah,” said the fat young man.

He didn’t sound cockney. He had a James Mason or George Sanders voice. A suave secret agent, a bit of a rogue … but coming out of a bloated, cherubic face, that accent was all wrong. Jayne wondered if Arthur was another fairy. Was that why mother and son—“Mahmah” must mean “Mother”—had said goodbye Piccadilly and farewell Leicester Square?

She stood there, dripping and steaming.

Arthur finished reading to the end of the page, lips moving as he mouthed the balloons. Then he neatly folded over the top corner and shut the comic. Journey Into Mystery . He tidied it away with a stack of similar publications, shuffling so the edges were straight as if he had just finished an exam and wanted his desk neat.

“What might the Hacienda Hayslip do for you, madame?”

“A room, for the night.”

“Nocturnal refuge? Most fortuitous. We do indeed rent rooms, nightly. Have you a reservation?”

Before she could answer, his mother piped up … “A reservation! What does she look like, a squaw? Who ever has a reservation, Arthur?”

“Formalities must be observed, Mahmah. Did you, madame, have the foresight to contact us by telephone or telegram … or is this more in the manner of an impromptu stopover?”

“The second thing,” she said.

“Spur of the moment? Fortunate for you, then, that one or two of our luxury cabins are unoccupied at present and can therefore be put at your disposal … are you of a superstitious or numerological bent?”

She shook her head.

“Don’t give her Thirteen,” said the old woman.

Arthur sucked his cupid’s bow lips between his teeth, making his mouth into a puckered slit. He was thoughtful or annoyed.

“I don’t mind,” she said.

So far as she could recall, none of the rooms she’d been groped or duped or roughed up in had had the unlucky number. Ordinary numbers were bad enough.

“It’s too close to the edge, Arthur,” said the old woman. “Be the next to go.”

“How would you like a cabin on the beach?” Arthur asked Jayne.

“Normally, that would sound nice. Just now, dry and warm is all I want.”

“It’s not nice,” shrilled Arthur’s mother. “Not nice at all. My son is trying to be funny. We sit on the cliff here and it’s crumbling away. The dirt’s no good. The rain gets in, loosens it up. The far cabins have gone over the edge. They tumble onto the beach. In pieces. You should hear the fearful racket that makes.”

Arthur blew out his lips and smiled.